Project Description
In Calvino’s Invisible Cities, the city of Octavia is described as follows:
Now I will tell how Octavia, the spider-web city, is made. There is a precipice between two steep mountains: the city is over the void, bound to the two crests with ropes and chains and catwalks.
In our final project, we are inspired by this fascinating city with its special and elegant structure. When envisioning the city of Octavia as our fictional space, we find it crucial to interpret the life of inhabitants of Octavia carefully so that it’s consistent with the uniqueness of Octavia. Therefore, our project is about the city of Octavia, and its people.
It is described in Invisible Cities that the life of Octavia’s inhabitants is less uncertain than in other cities. They know the net will last only so long. In our project, Fall of Octavia, the player will experience the last day of Octavia when the net finally couldn’t last anymore and the whole city starts to collapse. As is shown in the intro of Fall of Octavia, the player is given basic information about this city and his/her role — one of the inhabitants of Octavia. One objective is implied that the player should find his/her daughter and escape the city from the only way out — a wooden bridge leading to one of the mountains. On his way, the player will witness the gradual collapse of the city, and also the reactions of other inhabitants. After the player reaches the safe place across the bridge, the whole city will be falling to its doom in the abyss.
Our project is designed and implemented for Google Cardboard. Therefore, the forms of interactions are limited to looking around and clicking. Other than clicking to walk around, we use gazing as a subtle way of interacting with the inhabitants. When this kind of interaction is triggered, the inhabitants will change their posture.
Process and Implementation
During the whole brainstorming process of our project, we made some major changes to our story. In the original version of the story, the fall of Octavia is caused by a giant spider, who is destroying the “spider-web” city for some reason. The player has to escape to the mountain and cut the rope of the bridge and stop the spider from climbing over. After presenting our idea of the story, we got the feedback that the incentive of cutting the rope seems unreasonable. We realize that we were focusing too much on the interaction instead of the story itself. Therefore, we come to this version of the story by focusing on the experience of our player and the construction of an immersive environment.
Scene Design
The city of Octavia consists of the main city and some “floating islands” connected to it. We choose to use a medieval style for the city since we are using elements like ropes and chains, which seem more suitable with a relatively primitive style. From the opening scene, we try to convey to the player that the city has been in chaos. We use the particle system for fog around the whole city and many houses are on fire with heavy smoke.
Another important event that we focus on is part of the building in depredation. After falling apart, the big block is separated into many small bricks, each of which is a rigidbody.
Nonplayable Characters and Animations
Nonplayable characters, which are inhabitants of Octavia, play an important role in our project. They are created by 3D-modeling in Adobe Fuse and clothing asset is attached to the character. Later on, animations in the Mixamo library are applied to them.
One crucial decision that we make for interactions with the characters is whether to include conversations or not. We think about if it’s necessary to use conversations as the form of interaction. We realize that different animations on the characters have been enough to tell the story and conversations might bring about too much information for the player to capture and take in. However, we think it’s still important to implement some interactions between the player and the characters. Therefore, we apply gazing as interaction in a subtle way. To be more specific, if the player is in a certain close distance and keeps looking at the character, the interaction is triggered and they will change their posture. In this way, we hope the player is more participant as a character within this world and the story (without script) is told without a word.
The woman in fear when the player is in distance 
The woman prays on the knee when the player walks up and looks at her
Movement and Audio
For the movement of the player, the interaction is to walk by clicking on the path with reticle. Only the walkable surface is interactable and by using NavMesh system, a path is automatically chosen from the current position to the clicked spot.
Audio is another significant element in our project. First, we use the sound effect of wind over the whole scene. It reinforces the player’s feeling that Octavia is hung up high between the mountains. With the houses falling into the abyss, the atmosphere of tense is created. In addition, we apply ambisonic audio to the characters. There are people crying, screaming for help, and mumbling in panic. We hope to makes it more immersive for the player by expressing the fear and pressure of characters.
Evaluation and Reflection
In our project, “storyness” is mainly achieved in the form of environmental storytelling. Our story is all about the fall of Octavia, and the only explicit goal is to escape the city from the bridge. In fact, the introduction of the objective of finding the player’s daughter is our strategy to guide the player to explore the space and look at the characters carefully. I think we’ve realized environmental storytelling since we always keep it in mind in the design of every aspect of our project.
There’s no doubt that the environment itself shows the process of its destruction. The player will see houses burning at the opening scene. Events of houses falling and breaking into pieces are triggered along the player’s way towards the bridge. The fog and wind effect over the whole scene (around the player all the time) creates the intense feeling that Octavia is in a terrible state.
Environmental storytelling is also implemented by shaping the other characters. We hope that the story of Octavia is also told when the player witnesses the inhabitants reacting in different ways to its fall. Recall that “suspended over the abyss, the life of Octavia’s inhabitants is less uncertain than in other cities. They know the net will last only so long” (Calvino), there must be some people reacting differently from us when our hometown is doomed to be destroyed. Therefore, other than people fleeing in fear and getting injured, there are also people seeming calm and staying in the city. Maybe they are praying for Octavia to survive, or accepting the fate of the city and themselves. Maybe they are trying to capture the last moment of Octavia…… It’s open for the player to interpret.